Reading 2.4GHz Transmitters With An Arduino

There are a lot of cheap quadcopter kits out there, sold ready to fly with a transmitter and battery for right around $50 USD. One of the more popular of these micro quads is the V2X2 series. They are, unfortunately not compatible with any other radio protocol out there, but [Alexandre] has managed to use the transmitter included with his V202 quad to send data to an Arduino.

Like most quads, the transmitter that came with [Alexandre]’s V202 operates on 2.4GHz. Listening in on that band required a little bit of hardware, in this case a nordic Semiconductors nRF24L01p. Attached to this chip is a regular ‘ol Arduino running a bit of code that includes [Alexandre]’s V202 library.

Right now, the build can detect if the quad is bound or not, and read the current position of the throttle, yaw, pitch, and roll, as well as all the associated trims. It’s just the beginnings of [Alexandre]’s project, but his eventual goal is to build an Arduino bot based on the code, complete with RC servos. Not bad for a transmitter that will be utterly useless when the microquad eventually breaks.

It won’t connect to the “real” RC transmitter but that’s not the point. The point is to re-use those cheap toy transmitters for other purposes. Take it from someone who has 60 of them left over from a project :), I use them all the time.

Effectively, the aim of this project is to make a 2.4G receiver for the v202 protocol. I find this is more convenient to reuse a cheap radio than to make one. I will adapt this arduino code to use this transmitter with a multiwii quadcopter board. It avoids to plug a real receiver and a little quadcopter can lose significant weight. The nrf24l01 and the transmitter are very cheap, I want to us them in my all DIY remote controlled project.

I would like to apologize because of my bad english and my accent on youtube. I work on it :) But I wanted to share what I have made.
Thank you !

Hey guys! New to all of this and I have an old “Air Hogs” remote I’m tearing apart right now for the switches and LEDs. Just wondering if I can use this thing for a possible RC robot I would like to learn to build. Is it worth it to save it? Or just take the LEDs and switches? I have no idea how transmitters and receivers work, I know they have to be on the same frequency but not sure if I can actually use it with another machine so easily. I don’t have the receiver because I don’t have whatever toy this came from.

Not a lot of detail I know, but it was just given to me and I just took it apart. Got into electronics and robotics like a week ago, so I’m just trying to see what I can do with some motors, switches, LEDS and basic components I salvage from random old crap around the house. So far I have an old dell desktop, this transmitter, a DVD player, a microwave, this coffee grinder thing with a gnarly motor, and a couple other small motors.

Not too sure about this arduino stuff as I cannot code yet, but I am also looking for someone to discuss my idea for an AI with, I believe it may be revolutionary for AI and technology in general.